The greatest mathematicians, is said to have claimed: "Mathematics is the queen of the sciences and number theory is the queen of mathematics." The properties of primes play a crucial part in number theory. An intriguing question is how they are distributed among the other integers. The 19th century saw progress in answering this question with the proof of the Prime Number Theorem. Number theory is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers and integer-valued functions.
